Missouri attorney general investigates ActBlue over campaign fundraising fraud. Published September 25, 2026 1:53pm ET | Updated September 25, 2026 1:53pm ET Republican Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway announced Friday that her office is launching an investigation into ActBlue, the Democratic Party's largest online fundraising platform, over allegations that it accepted fraudulent and potentially illegal foreign political contributions. Hanaway's office issued civil investigative demands to ActBlue seeking documents and information related to its donation-processing and fraud-prevention practices. The company must produce the requested materials by Oct. 8, according to the attorney general's office. "When political fundraising is compromised, public trust and the foundations of our democracy are put at risk," Hanaway said. "Missourians deserve a political system built on honesty and confidence that campaigns are not being financed through unlawful foreign sources." The investigation will examine whether ActBlue processed fraudulent contributions that ultimately went to a Missouri political candidate, campaign, office, or committee, according to Hanaway's office. Federal law prohibits foreign nationals from contributing to U.S. elections, including to candidates, political parties, and political committees. The Missouri investigation follows a nearly two-year congressional inquiry into ActBlue's fraud-prevention practices. The House Administration, Judiciary, and Oversight and Government Reform committees released their third joint interim report earlier this month, alleging that ActBlue failed to adequately prevent illegal foreign contributions from reaching Democratic campaigns and organizations. The Republican-led congressional investigation alleged ActBlue's fraud-prevention policies were loosened multiple times in 2024 despite internal concerns about fraudulent donations. The committees also said ActBlue did not require donors to provide a valid U.S. passport when using its passport-verification system and that fraud analysts were, in some cases, instructed to give donors "the benefit of the doubt" when reviewing suspicious transactions. ActBlue has denied wrongdoing and disputed the congressional investigation's characterization of its fraud-prevention practices. ActBlue is a central piece of Democratic fundraising infrastructure, processing donations for thousands of Democratic candidates, political committees, and progressive organizations. The platform said more than 22,700 campaigns, organizations, and committees used it in 2025, when it processed $1.78 billion in contributions. Tag:

GOP lawmakers say ActBlue not taking fraud concerns seriously ahead of midterms. The platform's failure to answer questions about its fraud prevention practices show ActBlue still doesn't take lapses seriously, Republican lawmaker Bryan Steil tells Just the News. Published: September 21, 2026 11:05pm As the midterm elections approach, Republican lawmakers are concerned that the Democratic fundraising giant ActBlue is failing to take fraud prevention seriously, even after their probe of the company uncovered lax security practices. Lawmakers allege that lack of oversight allowed foreign donations to flow to progressive causes. "My concern from the beginning was that ActBlue did not have the fraud prevention standards that are needed to make sure that foreign money is not coming into U.S. elections, and what we reveal in the report... is clear indications that Act Blue is continuing to not make fraud, preventing fraud, a priority," House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil, R-Wis, told the Just the News, No Noise TV show. ActBlue's most senior officials repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment. "This is all based on a simple premise that U.S. elections should be for U.S. citizens only, and that foreign individuals should not be allowed to get money into U.S. elections. But time and again, it appears that Act Blue is not taking the proper fraud protocols and prevention needed to prevent that from happening," Steil said. ActBlue executives seem to have shown little interest in answering Congress's questions about the company's fraud prevention practices. ActBlue's most senior officials have repeatedly invoked their Fifth Amendment rights when asked questions about the company's donor verification practices. CEO Regina Wallace-Jones herself invoked that right 22 times in her appearance earlier this summer before the committees. ActBlue has repeatedly denied running afoul of the law during the course of Republicans' probe. Pleading the Fifth Amendment is not evidence of wrongdoing. Steil's committee, along with the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees, launched the probe into the progressive fundraising giant in 2024 after reviewing evidence that the platform, which is widely used by Democratic Party campaigns and affiliated causes, accepted donations from foreign sources and employed lax verification standards. Last week, Steil's committee - along with the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees - released the third interim report detailing the joint congressional investigation into ActBlue. The new report provides evidence that its passport verification system, which it previously told Congress was designed to exclude foreign donors from contributing to its system, did not actually verify passport numbers at all. Instead, ActBlue only verified that the number of characters matched the number used in valid passport numbers, according to internal company messages released by the committees. Steil: ActBlue were "looking for ways to process the donations rather than conduct fraud checks" The communications also show that, in some instances, ActBlue staff appears to have approved donations despite significant red flags. Steil said that this evidence indicates that staff were "looking for ways" to process the donations rather than conduct fraud checks. The committee found ActBlue's policy to be: "we give the benefit of the doubt to the donor." "If they were interested in preventing fraud, what they would be doing is leading the charge to make sure that no fraudulent donation was processed on their platform. They were doing the exact opposite. They were looking for ways to process the donation," Steil told Just the News. In one instance uncovered by the committee, an ActBlue supervisor approved a donation despite it displaying multiple severe fraud indicators, including "IP/billing mismatch and a concerning IP provider name, a foreign credit card, an odd email domain, and being connected to other rejected users." Instead of addressing the concerns, the supervisor instructed the subordinate to approve the donation because they could not "say for sure that this is fraud." In another, a supervisor faulted an analyst for rejecting a foreign contribution that used an Arkansas state code on the donation form. The supervisor instructed that the transaction should have been accepted because the software "can be wonky with requiring state codes for foreign donors." Additionally, the investigation showed that ActBlue staff would use things like social media accounts to verify donor identities. For example, in one case where the donor details indicated he or she was located in Canada but using a Missouri billing address, a supervisor instructed staff to accept the donation and use the donor's online X account to verify their identity. Most social media accounts are not verified, and people can create multiple profiles called "sockpuppets" in internet parlance. You can read the report below: ActBlue lawyers warned the company about misleading Congress. Lawmakers are also raising concerns about a concerted effort by ActBlue's leadership to cover up its lax security practices, and retaliate against internal whistleblowers who raised questions about them, Just the News reported last week. An outside law firm working for ActBlue warned the company in 2024 that it may have misled Congress in a 2023 letter that claimed it used "multilayered" screenings of contributions to help "root out" donations from overseas after the lawyers found that some of ActBlue's fraud prevention steps were not always followed, according to The New York Times. Amid the internal chaos at the company sparked by the congressional investigation, ActBlue's interim General Counsel Aaron Ting resigned. His letter of resignation reportedly cited "ActBlue's past practices for screening political donations from abroad and its past representations to Congress regarding foreign donations and related matters." After Ting's resignation, the company's last remaining lawyer on the legal team, Zain Ahmad, "reportedly notified ActBlue leadership, including ActBlue's Board of Directors, of credible allegations of misconduct at the company, including significant alleged violations of federal campaign finance law and false statements to Congress." According to the committee, Ahmad was placed on "a suspicious medical leave" and had his access to company email revoked. When Ahmed sent a message to IT services to request his access be restored, Hanna Bonin, ActBlue's director of IT, deleted the request. Ahmed appeared to suspect that he was facing retaliation for raising internal concerns about company policy. Ultimately, after the outside counsel raised serious concerns about possible illegal conduct at the company, "the platform's entire legal and compliance team either resigned, was fired, or went on extended leave within just four months after the 2024 election," the committees found.

House Republicans expand ActBlue probe over foreign-donation safeguards. House investigators say their examination of ActBlue will continue after internal records raised new questions about how the Democratic fundraising platform screened potentially foreign contributions, allegations ActBlue disputes. By yourNEWS Media Newsroom. House Republican investigators say they are continuing their examination of ActBlue after internal records raised additional questions about the Democratic fundraising platform's procedures for detecting potentially illegal foreign political contributions. House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., said lawmakers expect additional documents and testimony as three Republican-led House committees continue investigating ActBlue's fraud-prevention and donor-verification practices. "Whether it's allowing fraudsters to steal taxpayer dollars or accepting illegal foreign donations through ActBlue, Democrats have proven themselves to be the party of fraud. Our investigation into ActBlue is far from over. We expect more documents and testimony in the weeks ahead," Comer told Fox News in reporting published Monday. His characterization reflects the committees' allegations; the investigation has not established that Democrats as a party accepted illegal foreign donations through ActBlue. The latest scrutiny follows a Sept. 16 interim staff report released jointly by the House Administration, Judiciary and Oversight committees. Republican investigators said internal ActBlue policies and communications raised concerns about the way contributions associated with foreign addresses were reviewed. Among the issues identified by the committees was ActBlue's former passport-number procedure for donors using foreign addresses. According to the congressional report, the system checked whether an entered passport number contained the expected number of characters but did not validate the number against a government database. The report also cited internal communications in which ActBlue personnel discussed contributions that had triggered fraud indicators. One communication described by Fox News showed a supervisor arguing that a rejected contribution "should have been accepted" despite being identified internally as foreign because other identifying information matched. Another reportedly showed a supervisor recommending that a donor whose contribution had generated multiple warnings receive the "benefit of the doubt." Those records form part of a broader inquiry that House Republicans have pursued through multiple congressional sessions. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, discussed the investigation in an April interview, pointing to upheaval within ActBlue's legal and compliance operation after the 2024 election. "But things began to go a bit sideways for ActBlue during the 2024 election, after 'their top people in their legal department dealing with fraud prevention resigned,' Jordan explained," the report stated. A joint congressional report released in April said that by March 2025 every member of ActBlue's legal and compliance team had either resigned, been dismissed or gone on extended leave. House investigators have argued that those departures were connected to internal disputes over fraud prevention and representations made to Congress. ActBlue has disputed the committees' characterization of events and their conclusions. The investigation moved into a public hearing June 10, when ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones appeared before the House Administration Committee. Wallace-Jones repeatedly invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination rather than answer lawmakers' questions concerning foreign contributions, ActBlue's earlier communications with Congress and its fraud-prevention procedures. Invoking the Fifth Amendment is a constitutional right and does not by itself establish wrongdoing. During one exchange, Jordan said ActBlue's board chairman had identified as much as $38 million in 2024 contributions displaying indicators of foreign origin and asked Wallace-Jones how much fraud would be acceptable. "On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer the question pursuant to my Fifth Amendment rights under the Constitution," Wallace-Jones responded. Republican lawmakers subsequently intensified their document demands. On June 22, Jordan, Comer and House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil, R-Wis., warned that ActBlue could face contempt proceedings over what they characterized as inadequate compliance with congressional subpoenas. ActBlue has maintained that it has cooperated while asserting legitimate attorney-client privilege over certain records. Steil said the most recent disclosures left unresolved questions about whether ActBlue's safeguards were adequate. "ActBlue's own admissions raise serious questions about its fraud prevention practices, including a so-called passport verification process that did not actually verify or check entries against any government database. All options are on the table to ensure we get to the bottom of what is going on at ActBlue," Steil told Fox News. ActBlue rejects the central allegations. In a Sept. 16 response, the organization said an outside forensic review of its 2023 contribution records found that 99.99% of nearly $990 million in political contributions came from donors who supplied either a U.S. address or passport number. ActBlue said donations originating from Americans living abroad represented a very small portion of overall activity and argued that congressional Republicans had mischaracterized its procedures. ActBlue also said its former system required donors entering a foreign address to provide a U.S. passport number and that compliance personnel reviewed contributions in which an apparently foreign address was paired with the United States as the selected country. The organization has since said it blocks political contributions involving foreign mailing addresses, foreign IP addresses or foreign bank-identification numbers, even when doing so prevents some U.S. citizens overseas from contributing through the platform. The congressional committees dispute ActBlue's explanation, arguing that requesting a passport number without independently validating it was insufficient to establish that a donor was an American citizen. Their latest interim report maintains that the platform failed to adequately prevent unlawful foreign contributions. Federal law prohibits foreign nationals from directly or indirectly making contributions or donations in connection with federal, state or local elections. The House inquiry is now expected to continue through additional document production and testimony, with Comer saying investigators have not reached the end of their review and Steil saying lawmakers are keeping "all options" available as they examine ActBlue's past fraud controls and foreign-donor screening procedures. Posted by yourNEWS Media Newsroom. yourNEWS.com is a premier news dissemination platform operating at local, state, and national levels. 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